One particular sort of cereal or snack is an agglomerate of cereals, together with a binder such as syrup. The traditional way of making such a product consists of spreading a ‘wet’ blend of predominantly prefabricated cereals, some of which are puffed or crisped or flaked and hence very fragile, and a binding syrup, as a continuous layer onto a perforated continuous oven band, whereby during the baking/drying process a firm ‘cake’ is formed, which after sufficient cooling can be broken by means of mechanical breaking rolls or similar apparatus into the desired maximum size range for spoon-eaten breakfast cereals. As a consequence of this well established method, a significant amount of fines and unacceptably small pieces will result as a by-product, some of which can be recycled back into the wet blend, but with an upper limit of about 10% of that blend. The resulting agglomerate pieces of the preferred size range are usually called ‘clusters’.
The fact that powerful breaking rolls were used is visible from the fracture zones of the finished clusters. These fracture zones can detract considerably from desired product appearance, and can reduce the crispness of those clusters in milk or yoghurt significantly, due to local absence of the desired continuous coating of binding sugars and non-sugar glazing ingredients.
An improved apparatus and method, which overcome problems associated with the prior art discussed above, have been disclosed and claimed in the present applicants' earlier patent EP-1113920. Following on from EP-1113920, the applicants have improved the apparatus and method further, resulting in the present invention.